


in the silence, in the words

by bulut



Category: Akudama Drive
Genre: Character Study, Child Abandonment, Gen, Possibly Unrequited Love, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27621041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulut/pseuds/bulut
Summary: He can see the burden of the past on Courier's tongue, blocking the way out.
Relationships: Courier/Hacker (Akudama Drive)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	in the silence, in the words

**Author's Note:**

> *hides enormous "hacker is baby" agenda behind self*

_i. seek_

_Children_ , they always say. _Children should sit down and behave._

_Children should consider their parents; children should be grateful and behave._

Hacker is born into a world where he doesn’t even have a cardboard box to sleep in, no parents to be grateful to, and no one to teach him what “to behave” means. Hacker is born without being meant to, Hacker is unplanned and uncalled for and he doesn’t have a place no matter where he goes. Hacker’s most valuable treasure is his two eyes concealing the mind behind them and when he’s too weak to protect what he has, they take one of them from him, too.

There’s no one to turn to, nowhere to return. He must carve his own space, so he does.

His space, though, is only for existing, not living. There’s no freedom to be, as there’s no right to privacy for Akudama. Names and photographs are exhibited on flashing billboards, citizens always encouraged to take action whenever they see one. Hacker chances a stroll through police records and sees his entire existence folded into three measly sentences before a list of crimes takes up the rest of his file.

He’s not at the top where names like Doctor, Cutthroat, Courier brag several hundreds of years in sentence, but he’s working towards it. Maybe if he gets a whiff of it, he will find something to dedicate himself to, like those people so clearly did. After all, he’s seen them on many a rainbow-lit billboard, and the air of mystery around them would intrigue anyone in this walk of life.

The only straight face in the sea of the misbehaving, though, the only one not smiling or smirking or laughing, the smouldering eyes blooming on a face of ice, they would intrigue only a lonely, wandering, broken thing like himself.

_ii. find_

Sometimes he doesn’t know if he resents anyone he can’t be or if he resents anyone he can’t have.

Going out in disguise to find his face staring back at him from the same billboards he used to spy other Akudama on didn’t prove to be the entertainment he’d craved. The most stirring knowledge at his disposal is still Courier’s criminal record, and the most thrilling sensation ever known to him is still the one of the moment he first saw Courier in flesh. He was on a job, and he came and went in a flash of an eye. Hacker was still a duckling in the underground. _This person_ , he thought. _This person could be the entertainment I’ve been searching for._ He would never name it after what it actually was.

Now, a cold wind trapped inside his hollow chest as he’s on his way to investigate a recent job prospect, he can freely admit what he’s been looking for all his life is someone to accept him and stay by his side. It’s not like anyone is listening to a child not even his parents listened to, not like anyone cares if a criminal feels lonely.

Maybe another criminal, maybe someone from the same dwelling as him where the sunlight never filters in, maybe they would. Maybe Courier would.

If only he had the courage to find his answer.

Where he arrives at, there’s a group of Akudama, Hacker feeling like an outsider among such hotshots even though his sentence has surpassed some of the most famous ones’ by now. There’s Brawler, there’s Doctor, there’s Cutthroat, there are two terrified strangers and there’s Courier.

His heart beats. It’s a stupid drum, and it beats. He’s a foolish teenager with a crush, a pubescent boy with hormones, he’s an unseemly mess of blushing cheeks and matted curls, and his heart beats.

He might have a reputation of his own as a cybercriminal, he might be irredeemable, the scum of the earth every decent citizen of the nation hates with a passion, but in the eyes of those who are far worse, and in the depths of his own heart, he’s a child who will never, ever catch the eye of the one he wants.

_iii. clutch_

They need his potency to get past most barriers and he’s the one everybody turns to whenever a new obstacle comes their way, but that’s all he is, a disposable tool for digital purposes, a robot whose feelings don’t need to be handled with care because they’re not there.

He still walks forward and looks up. He replies when talked to. Swindler seems decent enough, if not a bit of a useless swindler judging from the way her clueless act is too overdone to be believable, but her conversation distracts from the vacuum in his head which sometimes swallows all thought and leaves a ringing silence in its wake. It’s all the same, though, just like it’s always been, because he’s still the same him and he’s still just as unlovable.

He’s unlovable, so he makes himself scarce, as far as it goes. Identical to the many nights he had to drone-fly through, on the run and looking for the home on the move he couldn’t find staying still, he’s awake in the darkest hour, far away from everyone and almost out the safety zone of the bomb, shivering. The cold is the one thing he could never grow accustomed to.

He’s a short, scrawny, underfed little lad, he’s aware. His rounded, hatted form may conceal some of it but he’s still shaking like a leaf. Now without the light and everybody sleeping, there’s no one to witness the rueful sight, something he’s both relieved and dejected about, but he knows it’s apt. Look for compassion in a mirror and the mirror only shows you what you’re made of: cold stone.

That’s why his voice retreats into an unknown location and drops off the map, that’s why he can’t even say thank you but just stares back, when the mirror stirs into a life of its own, when Courier’s silhouette obstructs the moon and his voice forms the most personal, most familiar words Hacker’s ears have ever known.

“You’re shivering. Lie close to another if you’re that cold.”

He’s a child, there’s an adult having his back for the first time in his life, and he doesn’t cry because artificial eyes don’t have tear glands, nor are artificial hearts capable of human feelings.

_iv. release_

All Akudama have something they hide. All Akudama have lost their capacity to feel, to some extent, in the places where they made others feel, hate disgust fear, more than their share. All Akudama, when push comes to shove, will cut somebody else’s slice out of the cake as they leave and see another day as the light goes out of another pair of eyes.

All of them are similar in their differences, all figures Hacker used to look up to, once upon a more innocent time; yet he doesn’t understand any of them and doubts any would understand him. He doesn’t feel an affinity to any of them but one.

Everybody has a raincloud looking over them, out of reach, in the sky. It comes in the form of their past. It takes pity on them and it’s a sunny day. It decides they can run away no more and they’re drenched. The fact is, he’s never seen anyone who had so much as a damp patch on their clothes until now, as he wanders soaking wet. No one up until now, no one until Courier, blanketed in a sheet of ice.

Whether Courier merely took pity on him through some leftover crumb of warmth in his spinal cord or genuinely saw something in him worth protecting, Hacker will probably never know. He won’t have the ears to; Courier won’t have the tongue to tell. One drone lighter, one last act of humanity later, he’s on a train to the end of his world, forever away from the wrecked existence he’s always longed to break free from.

For the first time in his life, his chest seizes at the idea of never returning to where he’s departed from, but that’s how he knows that by lifting his curse from the souls he left behind, he’s made the right choice.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm now noticing it's unclear from the way i wrote it but courier lay closer to hacker to share warmth after that exchange... i accidentally left that part too vague.
> 
> thank you for reading.


End file.
